“Fuck, dude, I am,” I grunted.
I would be fine, though. I just needed to get my second wind. I wouldn’t trade it for the world, as it was. I’d been thrilled when we had not only been contacted by but made it onto the semi-professional rugby team that practiced in this area. It had only been this past spring, but Lincoln and I hadn’t planned on leaving the area to begin with, so when the opportunity had fallen in our laps, we had snatched it up.
I just hadn’t accounted for how goddamn tired I’d be every night.
My brother and I could have worked at Gates Unity. Hell, that had been the tentative plan at first. It was the largest nonprofit charity in the country, but that meant I would have to wear a goddamn suit all day long, and while my mom and dad seemed to not mind it, it was not for me. That was far more King’s or Yates’s type of thing.
Maybe after a year or two I would. Although frankly, Linc and I were still hoping to go pro for rugby… but whether that would happen or not was completely up in the air. I frowned, wondering how much of a move that would require. I wasn’t opposed to traveling, but moving completely? Especially overseas? Didn’t sound like something Dahlia would enjoy, and that was enough to dissuade me.
We didn’t need the money, and we didn’t need the fame that came with professional sports, so as much as I loved rugby, I loved Dahlia far more.
Shifting my legs so that they were stretched out further in front of me, I narrowed my eyes slightly at what I was wearing. I’d been so fucking eager to see Dahlia after practice that I’d barely paid attention to what I’d put on. Lincoln always said I dressed like a slob, but Dahlia said she liked my paint-covered clothes, so that was good enough for me. Plus, the way she looked at me led me to believe that she was telling the truth. Then again, her word was essentially scripture in my mind, and that wasn’t changing any time soon. It had been that way since we were little and playing together in our backyard.
In fact, our entire group dynamic, in some ways, hadn’t altered very much over time. She and King would always decide what we were playing, while my brother and I would follow her around like fucking puppies. Yates would end up complaining about something, and Stratton would act like he wasn’t having any fun, despite complaining at the end of the night about going home.
It was a simple dynamic that I’d grown familiar with. However,unlikewhen we were little, I was now well aware that I was in love with Dahlia. Obsessively so. But I wasn’t the only one, which was clear to everyone but her. Not that I blamed her for not realizing it, because despite our actions, we’d never mentioned a word to her about dating. Mostly because what was going on between all of us was so much more complicated than dating.
It was the long game.
Running a hand over my face, I tried to not let my mind stray into the fantasies that came to fucking life every time I closed my eyes. I didn’t even need to actively think about her for her image to appear in my consciousness. Thoughts of her tied up to my bed. Thoughts of her on her knees in front of me, staring up at me with those massive green eyes. Or thoughts of riding her hard enough that she was screaming my name loud enough that everyone in this god-forsaken town would hear.
King’s phone rang and pulled me out of my thoughts. He sat up and answered immediately, his face darkening with frustration before he nodded, offering us a look. When he finally hung up, I realized Dermot had paused the game as we all waited for him to say some shit.
“We have to meet with them tomorrow,” King announced, standing up and walking towards the kitchen to grab another beer, most likely.
“The tournament events start tomorrow,” Lincoln pointed out. “If we don’t show, people will know.”
“Dahlia isn’t going alone,” I added. I knew exactly who would fucking be there because they showed up every goddamn year, and every year I considered finding a way to make sure that they were banned. Call me crazy, but it seemed like a lot of fucking work to come overseas for a charity golf tournament. Especially since they didn’t give a fuck about the sport, and they most certainly didn’t give a fuck about the charity.
My brother let out a low, frustrated sound as King walked back in the room, his eyes dark. “He fucked up last year. He won’t do it again.”
“Who?” Dermot asked curiously.
“Ian and George McCaffrey,” I muttered, hating their names.
Dermot made a dark annoyed noise, which means that he had somehow either heard of them or met them and didn’t like them, no doubt. Very few did. That wasn’t the part I gave a fuck about. The part I cared about was whotheyliked, and that happened to include Dahlia.
“Last year he landed himself a broken jaw,” King said evenly. “If that wasn’t enough to dissuade Ian, then he knows exactly where his fate lies.”
I smirked at that, because he wasn’t wrong.
“So what time tomorrow?” I changed the topic, not wanting my brother or him to get on a tangent. We needed to go into the weekend with a cool head, or else everything would fall apart pretty quickly.
“Around noon,” King sighed. “Apparently they have intel that can’t wait. I’ll have them meet us at the club, though. We can use one of the conference rooms. I have a feeling they were planning to come to the tournament anyway.”
I honestly wasn’t surprised that they wanted to meet up—it had been a bit of time since our last meeting.
There weren’t many things that we kept from Dahlia. This, though, we’d kept completely tight-lipped about. There was no reason for her to get involved in something so completely fucked up. Plus, I wasn’t positive how she would react to knowing just how many issues this town had and how fucked up our families really were. Dahlia lived in a very carefully constructed and protective bubble.
One that I didn’t plan on popping any time soon. Why would I? She was happy and deserved to be every single day.
I was also positive that the FBI would be fucking pissed if we told anyone that they hadn’t preapproved. King’s father was aware of what was going on, and I was almost damn positive that my dad knew as well, but he had purposefully stayed clear of it, just in case. He, Mr. Aldridge, and Mr. Carter tended to be the legal wall that existed to protect the Ross’s criminal enterprise that his family had established long ago. As a result, they had to keep their names fairly clear and be able to claim a lack of knowledge in almost anything like that.
I didn’t buy that they didn’t actually know what was going on, though.
Plus, Kingston wasn’t nearly as careful about keeping his name clear, and neither were we. Well, maybe ‘careful’ was not the right word. We just didn’t give a fuck. Our families were far too established to actually be threatened by the American system of government. It was why the FBI had decided it would be better to work with us and form a relationship with the faces that would be taking over the businesses that our fathers had worked so hard to build in the last three decades. By all regards, we were trust fund kids and didn’t need to work a day in our life, and it was true I didn’t want to work in an office. I would much rather devote my time to building our future with Dahlia, and if ensuring she was always safe came hand in hand with dangerous and illegal shit, I didn’t care in the least.
In the past two years, Kingston and Lincoln had made a point of compiling an entire dossier of everyone in Camellia, the affluent town outside of Wildberry Lane. It was common knowledge that we had enough shit to sink anyone we wanted to, and I was glad that King’s father had suggested doing so early on, because two years later, we had everything, and the FBI was well aware of that.